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Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture

When

April 20 – August 11, 2024 All Day

Where

Glyndor Gallery

Price

Free

with admission to the grounds

Pointing to the fact that the natural world encompasses remarkable gender and sexual diversity, Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture presents the work of artists who both challenge the way nature is used to uphold standards of normativity and recognize that the nature-culture divide, and other theoretical binaries, are arbitrary. On view in Glyndor Gallery, this group exhibition features artists Pyaari Azaadi (formerly known as Jaishri Abichandani), Seba Calfuqueo, Young Joon Kwak, Erin Johnson, Diana Sofia Lozano, Sofia Moreno, Christopher Udemezue and Rachel Youn.

Exploring queerness as both inherently natural and socially constructed, Perfect Trouble confronts the argument that queerness is “unnatural” while also rejecting reductive biological discussions of sexual and gender identity. The exhibition looks at the in-between and overlapping space of nature and nurture to challenge not only the binaries of sexuality and gender but also the boundary that divides the natural world from the constructed environment.   

Drawing from queer ecology and social theory, Perfect Trouble brings together works by artists who employ cultural, embodied and scientific knowledge to illuminate how nature, in fact, holds their lived experiences. In the context of the garden, where plants are grown in controlled environments, Perfect Trouble shows that the natural and human-made, the wild and cultivated, and male/female are binaries that depend on archaic and inadequate classification systems, which fail to acknowledge the expansive variety of life on Earth.

Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture is organized by Gabriel de Guzman, Director of Arts and Chief Curator; Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, Curator of Visual Arts, and Afriti Bankwalla, Curatorial Administrative Assistant.

Left to right: Erin Johnson, "There are things in this world that are yet to be named", 2020 and Diana Sofia Lozano, "A Fruiting Body is Responsible for Which of the Following", 2022, on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. All works courtesy of the artists. Photo: Stefan Hagen.

Left to right: Christopher Udemezue, "a tenderness when I was low and a touch on the side of my waist on days like today. A voice? something brought us to this space", 2024, courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York, and Erin Johnson, There are things in this world that are yet to be named, 2020, courtesy of the artist, on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. Photo: Stefan Hagen.

Diana Sofia Lozano, "Downward Drifter", 2023, on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Stefan Hagen.

Left to right: Young Joon Kwak, "Aggregate Body (Wall Grid I)", 2018, courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; Pyaari Azaadi, "Holy Family", 2015-17, courtesy of the artist; and Young Joon Kwak, "Uh, As if", 2012; "Aggregate Snail Vaginis", 2018; "Trans-Creation Relic", 2017, courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. Photo: Stefan Hagen.

Pyaari Azaadi, "Holy Family", 2015-17, on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Stefan Hagen.

Clockwise from left: Young Joon Kwak, "Aggregate Snail Vaginis", 2018, courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; Sofia Moreno, "Autorretrato con vestida involuntaria (Self-portrait with a cross dresser)", 2023; 9 drawings from the series "Mi Jardin Botanico (My Botanical Garden)", 2023, courtesy of the artist; and Young Joon Kwak, "Snail Leg", 2018; "Trans-Creation Relic", 2017, courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. Photo: Stefan Hagen.

Left to Right: Chirstopher Udemezue, "Down by the manchineel tree", 2024; "and she said…'sonje fig isa a…,'" 2024, courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York; Rachel Youn, "10,000 hours", 2022, courtesy of the artist and Sargent’s Daughters; and Christopher Udemezue, "the refraction", 2024; "Where lies the seeds of the dead I shall bring forth echoes that gather in the light", 2024, courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York, on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. Photo: Stefan Hagen.

Left to Right: Rachel Youn, "10,000 hours", 2022, courtesy of the artist and Sargent’s Daughters; Christopher Udemezue, "the refraction", 2024; "Where lies the seeds of the dead I shall bring forth echoes that gather in the light", 2024, courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York; and Diana Sofia Lozano, "A Fruiting Body is Responsible for Which of the Following", 2022, courtesy of the artist, on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. Photo: Stefan Hagen.

Seba Calfuqueo, "Abya Yala People", 2024, from the series "Mínimo común denominador (Lowest common denominator)", on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Stefan Hagen.

Left to right: Seba Calfuqueo, "Remedio", 2021, from "Serie Esporas (Spores Series)", courtesy of the artist, and Christopher Udemezue, "Down by the manchineel tree", 2024; "a tenderness when I was low and a touch on the side of my waist on days like today. a voice? something brought us to this space", 2024, courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York, on view in "Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture" at Wave Hill, 2024. Photo: Stefan Hagen.